Deadline for Reservations is August 19, 2013! Room availability is not guaranteed after this date.

Dedication Date Confirmed"It was confirmed today that the Mass and dedication of the Holy Cross memorial is scheduled for
September 2nd 2013 at 10:00 a.m.
This date is Labor Day Monday which is a Holiday for us but a significant date for the laborers that we will honor."
- Carlos Rascon

I thought that perhaps it would be helpful to include their middle names to help surviving families identify if any of the 28 victims are their relatives.

Carlos R.

Benefit Concert Update

“The benefit concert was a great success! You helped raise $ 3,400.00 dollars towards the Memorial project. I’m so grateful to everyone who prepared the concert, the performers, artists and all of you present that night. Thank you for your support.”
- Carlos Rascon

Benefit Concert"Hello Dear Friends, I'm sending you this flyer for the benefit concert
we are having in Fresno on April 18...in effort to raise the
money needed to make the new headstone listing all 28 names
a reality. Lance and I will be performing together as well,
and I'll be reading some of the work from my book-in-progress."
- Tim Z. Hernandez

January 28, 2013, marks an important historical anniversary. Sixty-five years ago a chartered immigration plane crashed and burned in Los Gatos Canyon near Coalinga, California. Twenty-eight migrant farm workers, three crew members and one immigration guard all perished in what was called the worst airline disaster in the history of the Central California Valley.The twenty-eight migrant passengers were laid to rest in a mass grave at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery on Belmont Avenue in Fresno, California. A bronze marker identifies the burial site. However, for unknown reason, lacks the names of the deceased as one would normally find inscribed on cemetery markers.As written by musician Woody Guthrie, the names of these migrant passengers were not disclosed to the public in any of the newspapers at that time, which prompted him to write a song called “Deportee” in protest of the offensive omission.Sixty-five years later, the song he wrote is again raising interest from musical artists familiar with Woody’s song, “Deportee.” Intrigued audiences that have heard the story over the years, along with other visitors who are familiar with the event, occasionally come to Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery to visit the gravesite.Under the Direction of the Diocese of Fresno and the Woody Guthrie Foundation, efforts are underway to raise enough funds to purchase a large memorial honoring the thirty-two victims of the crash and finally engraving the names of the twenty-eight citizens of Mexico that never returned home. When the memorial is completed a dedication ceremony will be scheduled and the public notified.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno is trying to right a wrong for 28 Mexican citizens who died in a plane crash 65 years ago near Coalinga.

The group of migrant farmworkers -- employed in a program that allowed Mexican citizens to enter the United States to perform seasonal work and then return to Mexico -- never made it home. The chartered immigration plane they boarded out of Oakland for their return trip to Mexico lost its left wing and fell from the sky. Everyone aboard -- the farmworkers, three crew members and an immigration guard -- died.

The crew members and guard were buried at various cemeteries. The farmworkers were buried in a mass grave at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Fresno -- with a bronze grave marker bearing the words "airplane accident" and no names.

It was 2010, when I first came across the headlines “100 See Ship Plunge,” while researching another book I was working on at the time. I read the article and quickly found myself jotting notes down for another book idea that would surely come later. By early 2011, I was neck-deep in the research around the plane crash. Initially, my creative impulse was to re-write the stories of the 28 “Deportees,” to capture their lives, or
re-envision them at least, through fiction. On the internet, I found a list claiming to be the names of the passengers on that flight. Some of the names seemed off mark, but still, entirely possible. I approached the Holy Cross Cemetery in early 2011 asking if they could confirm the names I had found with their records, since they are the cemetery where the remains of those passengers are buried. After a few attempts, cemetery Director, Carlos Rascon, was successful in locating records, and this is how the names were finally confirmed. Together we pondered the possibility of erecting a new headstone listing the names of the passengers, rather than leaving the headstone as it is currently: “Buried Here are 28 Mexicans Who Died in a…”

Over the last two years of research, it seems the question that comes up most frequently is how this discovery shines a light on the current immigration debate. I’m not sure if it does or does not, however, it certainly shines a light on the significance of human dignity. Of course, there is the undeniable timeliness to this. To think that these names have been logged away in the annals of American history for 65 years—in arms reach of anyone who just scratched the surface, but that no one has until now, is an incredible thought. I’ve asked myself this often, why now, why today, have these names emerged? Certainly, countless scholars have written about this specific Woody Guthrie song, any of who could’ve dug these names up at some point in the last six decades. Indeed, why now?

In line with Bishop Ochoa’s sentiments, “In heaven we don’t have national boundaries,” I agree, and feel this reclamation is more a matter of human dignity. An element that reaches far beyond our human-imposed delineations and ideas, to a place of the sacred. It’s for this reason that my book will not only be about the 28 unnamed “Deportees” who died on January 28, 1948, but it will also be about the four officials on board too. And the dozens of eyewitnesses who saw it unfold. As well as Guthrie and the schoolteacher named Martin Hoffman, who is the one who actually wrote the melody to that song. It’s about all of these lives coming together at an intersection, albeit a tragic one. I believe that only when we can look at the whole picture, we can see clearly that human dignity transcends colors, social class, and lines in the dirt. For now, the discovery of these 28 names may appear only symbolic in regards to current immigration debates, but is in times like these that we often find ourselves looking to our collective past for answers.

And if there is one thing that time has proven, it’s that when a moment or incident like this plane crash gets immortalized via the arts: music, literature, theater, etc…it suddenly finds new meaning with a new audience years, decades, centuries down the road. And then we begin to ask ourselves questions as a whole. What might we learn from our past failures and triumphs. What mistakes do we find ourselves repeating? And, is there a better way?

In the end, if one is seeking for some significance to the discovery of these 28 names or the memorial, my hope is that it is focused on this single thread we call humanity. Without our names, what are we? Who are we? Our names are really the shining medallion of our dignity, our birthright. This is what the great American folk musician Woody Guthrie had in mind when he penned his song, “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos.” This is what the schoolteacher Martin Hoffman had in mind when he composed the beautiful melody for it. In the same way, it’s my hope that my book will take their efforts one step further, by not only broadcasting the true names of all 28 passengers, but by putting the scattered pieces of their lives back together so that now, 65 years later, the intact dignity of those souls who perished can be restored.